This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2003-80080, filed on Nov. 13, 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network apparatus and packet routing method for ubiquitous computing, and more particularly, to a network apparatus and packet routing method capable of providing networking services to users by using a plurality terminals on a network in a ubiquitous computing environment to establish a user-oriented networking environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ubiquitous computing technology comes from a paradigm change from the conventional terminal-oriented computing environment toward a user-oriented computing environment, and by allowing a user to receive application services at any location of a network through a variety of terminal on the network, service absorption and user convenience are enhanced.
This ubiquitous computing technology is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,438,585, “System and method for redirecting message attachments between a host system and a mobile data communication device”, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,306, “IP network access for portable devices”, and an article, “Mobile agent network for supporting personal Mobility”, in International Conference on Information Network (ICOIN), 1998.
The technology disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,438,585, pays attention to the fact that a mobile data communication devices carried by a mobile user has a low processing power and usually is connected to a network wirelessly, and aims at providing an apparatus for selecting a minimum amount of information in data and transferring the selected information to a wireless device, while a large amount of data from a wire network is processed in a host system connected to the wire network. This system includes a host system connected to a wire network and a device connected to a wireless network. By a redirector program operating at a host system, a selective event message on a transferred packet is generated and transferred to the device such that load to the mobile devices decreases. By doing so, consumption of wireless low bandwidth resources can be reduced. Furthermore, it provides reduction of the load to a wireless device having a relatively low processing power.
Meanwhile, in the technology disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,306, when a mobile terminal accesses to a foreign network not to its home network, an access router assigns a temporary address for the mobile terminal, and for packet transmission and reception of the mobile terminal, the access router performs conversion of the home address and temporary address such that the mobile terminal can access the network without additional setting or changes in protocols. The system is formed with a guest terminal accessing a remote network and an access router supporting the guest terminal to access the network. When the guest terminal accesses the foreign network not its home network, the access router assigns a temporary address for the guest terminal and for packet transmission and reception of the mobile terminal, conversion of the home address and the temporary address is performed by the access router. Accordingly, the mobile terminal is allowed to access the network without additional setting or changes in protocols.
Meanwhile, in the technology disclosed in the article in the ICOIN, a logical mobile agent network on a layer higher than the physical Internet is suggested. It aims at providing user mobility on the Internet by moving a mobile agent when a user moves between networks. The system suggested in the article includes a mobile agent engine installed in a host system on the Internet, a mobile agent operating on an execution engine, and a servant object to solve the security problem of the mobile agent. As a user moves between networks, the mobile agent moves between execution engines, and transmits its location information to a fixed agent in the home network. The agent operating on an execution engine can operate by calling only an interface provided by a servant to prevent damage to the host system, such that the local security problem can be solved.
However, the conventional technologies do not suggest at all a structure for a user to receive application services through a variety of terminal on a network, the structure that is essential in establishing a user-oriented computing environment. Since user-oriented computing is performed in a ubiquitous computing environment, technologies to enhance service absorption and user convenience are essential, but the conventional technologies cannot provide a method to establish this user-oriented computing.